MITT ROMNEY “NO APOLOGY”. BOOK ANALYSIS. WHERE HE STANDS. Chapter One Pursuit of the Difficult. A Free and Strong America.
BACKGROUND
In 2010 Mitt Romney published a book of his political views and beliefs. Romney is a likely contender for the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential campaign. He has approximately six million dollars in his federal campaign fund. The DNC has only seven million at this point. He also controls five state campaign funds to build his allies in bellwether states like Iowa, New Hampshire and Alabama which will be influential in the presidential nomination process. Therefore his views are important as they are bound to be influential no matter what transpires with his candidacy.
PERSONAL HISTORY
In the first chapter he briefly states his background. His grandparents were farmers in Mexico where they had fled to avoid religious persecution in the United State. They also had to leave Mexico because of threats by Mexican revolutionaries against the ex-patriate community. This caused his grandparents to move back to the United States where they went into the construction business. His father later became a successful businessman and eventually became President of American Motors
(Romney attended elite private preparatory schools in Michigan and went on to Stanford and finished college at Brigham Young University in Utah. From there he obtained a joint MBA/JD degree at Harvard. He did his required Mormon missionary work in France. Thereafter he was a venture capitalist and then governor of Massachusetts. These facts are not mentioned or only breifly alluded to is his brief outline of his back ground in chapter one.) He puts a lot of store in the lessons he learned from his father for instance when he made him weed the lawn often. “A difficult task that built character according to Romney? ” One wonders if weeding the lawn was more formative than his college years or his experience as Governor.
POINT OF VIEW RE: FOREIGN POLICY
Romney points out that Presidents like Truman and Eisenhower met the challenges of the post WWII period head on and established the United States as the political and moral leader of the World. They advanced the cause of democratic government and capitalism in the face of daunting challenges namely from the Soviet Union and its Marxist allies. Now we must seize the initiative if we are going to remain a positive force for democracy and free trade in the world.
CURRENT CHALLENGES
He alleges that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 through the efforts of our presidential leadership including Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. ( Most experts believe when oil dropped to ten dollars a barrel on the world market the Soviet Union no longer had the wherewithal to sustain itself economically. Gorbachev was intelligent and courageous enough to admit that Communism had feet of clay and dissolved the Empire.)
He now sees challenges for leadership from China, a totalitarian state, with a semi free market but little personal freedom; from Russia, which has reverted to totalitarianism under Putin, and its economy is not a true capitalist one but still dependent on oil. While there is more personal freedom than under communism the state brooks no criticism of its policies and actions and the KBG under Putin is the master of life and the economy; from Iran a religious theocracy whose aim is to overcome the West and through Islam dominate the World. Its economy is state controlled and is also dependent on oil.
The true force for democracy, freedom and capitalism or a free, lightly regulated economy is the United States which is supported in varying extent by the other Free World democracies. Democratic countries trading freely is the only system that appears to be sustainable according to Romney . Totalitarian states and controlled economies eventually collapse from their own inherent flaws. Just as the Soviet Union based on the Communist model collapsed, the British Empire, based on the mercantilist model broke down, the Spanish Empire based on conquest and transferring the wealth of the colonies to Spain withered away. Before that the Roman Empire based on slavery and conquest passed into history.
He points out that the United States has never sought to increase its power by conquest or colonies. Although we were the major victor in WWII we did not seek to expand the territory under our control. Indeed we undertook to rehabilitate our enemies and allies at great expense. (One guesses the accession of Northern Mexico is the exception that proves the rule and then there is Puerto Rico once a Spanish Colony and now a U.S Commonwealth which in the beginning was a guardian to that vital life line the Panama Canal when it was later constructed. This was probably the reason for the Spanish American War.)
THE PREMISE
The Premise of the book , No Apology, stems from the fact the United States has always been the champion of justice, freedom and liberty in the World and President Obama had no call to apologize for our conduct of the Iraqi and Iranian wars or our conduct of foreign affairs without consulting our long standing allies that occurred under Bush II.
(However the neo-conservatives in the Bush II administration had proclaimed the Twenty First Century the new American Millennium because we were the only super power in the world and therefore we could act in foreign affairs without seriously consulting our long standing allies as had been customary in the past. Thus except for Britain, always a stead fast supporter, we only received token support in the Iraqi and Afghan wars. Now we need the force of World opinion to stem the Iranian drive for hegemony in the Middle East. In part caused by the power vacuum in Iraq and the rise of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. North Korea in the Pacific is another problem. )
Thus the book starts out with a hollow premise and harks back to the blind foreign policies of the Bush II Administration which cost 4500 American dead in Iraq, and thousands of American casualties. This is not to consider the countless Iraqi dead and wounded both hostile and friendly. This price was paid but the main enemy Al Qaeda and their supporters are still active and still a threat to the United States and our Allies.
Romney is adopting the neo- conservative policies of the Bush II Administration with a different cover and assumes the U.S is the only force for freedom and justice in the World and therefore we have to go it alone. ( However to be a leader we must convince our Allies and even our detractors that our cause is just, feasible and rational: i.e. the confrontation in Iran. )
The free and strong part is always a good idea because we can’t be one without the other. However the rest of his mantra is moth eaten ideas left over from Bush II . The Obama Administration’s foreign policy ideas and conduct are more sophisticated, realistic and more likely to achieve the results we want using diplomacy and force only as the last resort. The goal is a democratic peaceful World that is free and strong not American hegemony over the world.
2012 Republican Presidential Contenders?
Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty
.
Recent early polls indicate Mitt Romney may be a major Republican Presidential contender. At present he is far ahead of other likely contenders namely Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin and others whose names have been advanced. No one has announced their intentions to run for the Republican nomination… but most are active in supporting candidates with appearances and money in other races.
Religion seems continually to dog Romney. The issue is; can conservative Christian voters reconcile the fact that he is an admitted active follower of the Mormon faith. One of the alleged tenets of the religion is Satin is God’s brother and the Book of Mormon is the third Bible. the religious issue is like the allegation that John Kennedy would take orders from the Pope if elected.
However Romney was elected Governor of Massachusetts a state with few Mormon’s and many Catholics and mainstream Protestants. It was also the home state of John Kennedy who had his own problems regarding his religion as said.
If handled right it will turn out to be a tempest in a teapot and will fade as an issue just like Barrack Obama put race to rest in his Philadelphia speech. After all we are all Americans, bound by mutal acceptance of the Constitution and the only real differences that matter are political interpretation, economic and social views, not religious preference.
SARAH PALIN IN A NUT SHELL: GOING ROGUE: END PAPERS. Final Days Abandoning Politics as a Candidate: Preaching To The Choir.
RINGING IN THE SHEAVES
The last chapter of this book is entitled Going Forward, with a quote from her father Chuck Heath Jr. “Sarah’s not retreating; she’s just reloading.” However if anything is to be taken away from this book it is that Sarah, after a taste of national political candidacy, decided that elective office was not for her. This occurred sometime after she resumed her duties as governor and probably when she secured a book deal with Harper Collins, Rupert Murdock’s book company.
She resigned in July 2009 when she knew she could raise money with a defense fund to defend herself from her FOIA and ethics violations lawsuits. She also had Sarah Pac to raise money for political pursuits and which apparently has absorbed the defense fund since there are no more FOIA or ethics lawsuits. In the first year almost all the money raised by Sarah Pac (2.1 million dollars. $700,000.00 in the first six months) was spent on expenses for herself and her staff at a time when she was not running but “writing” a book. She had notice of a book advance before resigning in July 2009 for 1.25 million.
Sarah Pac spent $47,777.00 on copies of “Going Rogue”. This alone would make it a best seller with all the free publicity associated with that list. Currently New York magazine estimates her net worth at 12 million dollars.
It appears by July 2009 she made a mental decision to abandon politics as a candidate and seek a future in the media, a far more lucrative pursuit in her case. (Estimates say she made 10 million on Going Rogue) Thus she was not reloading but “advancing in a different direction.”(Gen. MacArthur). Her final words are a reiteration of her message in this book, less taxes, less government, big defense, more police protection, throw the incumbents out. She extols the virtues of and philosophy of Ronald Reagan who seems to have taken most of his ideas from economist Milton Freeman. ( Since the recent collapse of Wall Street Milton Freeman’s philosophy is considered too radical and even his mentor, Locke’s, ideas, that free markets are self regulating, has been reexamined and found to be too heavy handed. In fact there are no free markets if the government is not regulating for the public benefit private entities will regulate for their own advantage. Totally free markets are a myth.)
So she continues to espouse conservative ideals that were around before Barry Goldwater and out of favor economic philosophies to a small core audience which is willing to pay handsomely for her media appearances, speeches and books. She will have a new book out in November 2010, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag, and from the advance notices it will be more of the same.
She acknowledges the ghost writer of Going Rogue book in a line ” Lynn Vincent who helped me put words on a paper.” (I hope Lynn got her money up front because she got less than a grudging acknowledgment in the end.)
It is interesting to note that Karl Rove in an interview on the probable Republican candidates in 2012 doesn’t mention her name. Probably because he knows she received political media celebrity without having to work for it by holding office and doing something. Thus she received the rewards of leadership without being a leader. Also he knows that as a far right commentator and a resigned governor it would be nearly impossible to win a national election.
She is a polarizer and not the conciliatory type needed to attain national office. However she will probably continue preaching to her conservative choir as long as they will listen and are willing to pay her. Her divisive message is for going backward not going forward.
FINIS
Sarah Palin In A Nut Shell: Going Rogue: Book Analysis: Events Leading To Resignation. Resignation And Escape To Dillingham.
PLAYING THE MOMMY HOOD CARD JULY 3, 2009
PALIN AND FAMILY. SHE RESIGNS ON A HOLIDAY WEEKEND. ONE HOUR NOTICE TO THE PRESS. TWELVE MINUTE ANNOUNCEMENT. NO QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
Sarah states, in Alaska, the cost of defending suits for ethics violations while in office is to be borne by the officeholder. This soon amounted to $500,000, a sum equivalent to several years’ income for the Palin Family. At the time she had not established a legal defense fund to accept donations for this (later she did along with Sarah PAC? The Defense fund and SaraPAC raised $250,000 and $1,000,000 respectively as of July 2009 and through the end of 2009 Sarah PAC raised 2.1 million, spent 1.1 million with $ 900,000 in the bank and doled $64,000 out to candidates. Recently Palin’s personal net worth has been estimated at $12,000,000, from book sales, speaking and other media fees.)
Because of the time spent on responding to Freedom Of Information Act Requests and Ethics violations lawsuits she had no choice but to resign as Governor of Alaska. She is not a “quitter” but because of the abuse and ridicule that was heaped on her family and the financial situation she reluctantly resigned from office on July 3, 2009. Then she left for remote Bristol Bay for the Salmon Run and spent the early part of July netting Salmon.
There was only one local television station present for the resignation announcement which took place in her back yard with Lake Lucille as a backdrop. The news soon hit the national media and reporters were dispatched to interview Sarah on her future abandoning their Fourth of July weekend plans.
There is no cell phone service on Bristol Bay but there is a land line. She announced she would be available for interviews in Dillingham (Pop. About 2500) on Bristol Bay between tides and invited all the media except for CBS. (Thus she endeared herself to the media once again, by announcing only to a single local station on the day before a long holiday weekend and departing for a remote location.) She says she scheduled her announcement and the subsequent press conferences and interviews at a location with poor communications facilities to show the media what rural Alaska looked like.
As a result the reporters had to give up their weekend with their families to cover her resignation. (Thus the champion of family values is pretty callous about the families of the media. The irony of all this is it’s the media that shaped her public persona and established her as a celebrity. Maybe Joe McGinniss will tell who Sarah Palin really is. )
She alleges that she was the victim of a liberal political assault that drove her from office by harassment much like Newt Gingrich was in the nineties. She claims this was a tactic developed by Saul Alinsky a community organizer from Chicago whose strategies and tactics were adopted by Rahm Emmanuel, as stated in his book “The Thumpin”. (Compared to Whitewater and the Ken Starr’s political persecution of the Clinton’s her treatment was mild and it’s obvious she had the financial means or knew it was available before she resigned to fight her adversaries and remain Governor .
Looking at history the abuse Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary took ending in his assassination makes her reasons for resigning look like a joke. Even Nixon only abandoned elective office when it was clear he would be impeached.
However if anyone developed these hardball tactics it was Lee Atwater and his acolyte Karl Rove. Rove’s modus operandi was not just to file civil suits but with the aid of Alberto Gonzales and others to file criminal suits not just against the losing candidates perceived as a threat but also their supporters and donors.
Many people who supported the Democrats ended up defending themselves on frivolous alleged felony violations of the political campaign laws or other federal violations pPreviously treated as misdemeanors.
These prosecutions were brought not by the RNC or some private organization but by the U.S. Attorney General’s office . Many were jailed for political reasons and lost there livelihoods because of these tactics.)
Before she resigned to “protect” her family she says Bristol was attacked for trying to become a spokes person against teen pregnancy by advocating abstinence. The message in the book was that Bristol was using some type of contraception and it failed or the teenagers didn’t use it correctly and she became pregnant. Therefore the only safe practice is abstinence.
Also Trig’s picture was photo shopped to make him look like a monster and posted on the web. Even Track her son serving in Iraq was aware of the media attacks on the family and concerned enough to call her about it. She says his advice was to hang on.
She alleges the reason for her resignation was lack of finances (apparently not true) and to protect her family from the media. (However she has always inserted her family into her politics. They appeared at campaign rallies and press conferences with her and she campaigned on the fact she was a mother with five kids and one was a special needs child. Many pages in this book celebrate her motherhood with anecdotes about her children. She’s always put them out front as a political strategy. Hillary by contrast kept Chelsea mainly out of the spotlight even though she was an adult. Her whole political life has been dominated by the conservative mantra which she mouths at every opportunity and the mommy hood ploy.)
The inescapable conclusion is she deserted the people of Alaska who voted for her to be Governor when it became convenient for her.
Sarah Palin In A Nutshell: Going Rogue: Book Review: Election Day Denouement: Post Election Travails.
Passing From A Political Person of Interest Into A Right Wing Political And Media Celebrity
The Concession.
After casting her vote in Alaska she flew to Phoenix with her family to await the election results. Many of her friends and extended family flew into Phoenix to be present at the announcement of victory or the concession speeches. Approximately a week prior to election day the campaign had her meet with Mathew Scully and Lindsay Hayes, two speech writers, to prepare speeches to be given on election night one for a victory or one for a concession. Therefore she expected to be speaking on election night on a nationwide hook up no matter what the results.
The GOP polls forecasted a defeat and to that end she focused on a concession speech. One that extolled the virtues of John McCain and also to thank the American people for the honor of participating in a Presidential Election. She was also planning to say something in appreciation of the Bush-Cheney Administration efforts. (This is probably why they didn’t let her speak as the Bush-Cheney Administration was blamed for the economic collapse as well as our difficulties in Iraq which didn’t help their GOP candidacy and one of the main tactics of the McCain campaign was to distance itself from Bush and Cheney.)
On election day they all met at the Phoenix Biltmore Resort Hotel. There she was told by Steve Schmidt she would not be giving a speech as it has never been done before when a candidate was defeated and that he didn’t know why she prepared a speech in the first place. In the book she points out that John Edwards gave one when the Democrats lost in 2004 and he had been the Vice Presidential candidate. She says Matthew Scully had previously told aides to Steve Schmidt that he was working on election night speeches for Sarah. She met with McCain and told him she wanted to speak and thank him for choosing her to run with him. He thanked her and said Steve Schmidt had it covered. (Apparently Schmidt was taking no chances on Sarah at this emotional moment. A woman he perceived as a loose cannon.)
Then without any warning she was told to get ready to appear and that her husband and children would not appear with her. Todd went anyway. So she had to shoo Piper and her cousins away. McCain gave a brief concession speech and she hugged him and then it was over.
Some of her aides went to the post election farewell parties where they learned that main campaign staffers, when it became apparent they were going to lose, had gone around to the reporters feeding them negative stories about her and her family for after election publication.
The next day Mark and Nicole Wallace came by to say goodbye, how much they loved working with her and that they loved her. (This can only interpreted as sarcasm based on prior statements in the book.)
The Wallace’s also told her that it was going to get really nasty because of the coming negative stories in the media. She wondered how the Wallace’s would know that in advance. (The inference was that the Wallace’s had participated in the dissemination of the stories in question.)
She flew back to Alaska on the day after the election and the fall out was immediate. She was still Governor and scores of Freedom Of Information Act requests were filed along with lawsuits related to alleged ethics violations requiring her and her staff to spend thousands of hours answering and defending them. This effectively prevented her from carrying out the normal duties of Governor. Most of the requests and lawsuits were from liberals or leftist out to destroy her.
Anonymous McCain aides were leaking shocking character assassinations about her to the press. So she not only was attacked from the left but by former campaign staff as well. Stories were told that the RNC lawyers had to fly to Alaska to reclaim the stolen fancy campaign clothes. Todd had Fed-Exed thirty boxes of clothes back to the RNC. (Earlier the book suggests she got rid of the wardrobe right away when the news broke but apparently not. Maybe she just set them aside.)
The national media pundits continued to speculate on her role in the campaign and as to her new future and national ambitions. This was the new normal for her and her family. She experienced the tabloidization of herself and her family. They had become tabloid celebrity fodder. There was even speculation that she and Todd were divorcing which were untrue.
Then the bloggers weighed in with accusations made up out of thin air such as Trig was not her baby or they were going to release porn pictures of her, which never materialized?
She became aware that she and her family were now grist for all types of media speculation. Even the main stream media which was supposed to be objective lost its objectivity reporting unfounded stories based on internet blogger rumors and speculation.
Her Judicial appointments were criticized by well meaning people that didn’t realize that the Alaska Judicial Council made the initial selection and presented her with a panel. Thus many times her choice was really a Hobson’s choice of the best of bad options.
Then David Letterman made an unnecessary off color joke about fourteen year old Willow and Alex Rodriguez. She was criticized as being unable to take a joke, but in this case it was about her daughter and was mean intentioned and she decided not to let it pass without criticizing Letterman for his callousness. It seemed that the media and near media were baiting her for a response so they would have news to report as she was now a newsworthy person.
She was disturbed by the Obama Administrations policies which she thought were a departure from the free market capitalism which had made this country great. This was true of the stimulus package in particular. In order to qualify for the benefits to the stimulus a state had to impose many new regulations on its citizens and it also increased the states regulatory bureaucracy to enforce the regulations. One was uniform building controls for Alaskans’ who had never had to deal with them before. ( I guess she doesn’t know Alaska is a welfare state getting five dollars for every one dollar paid to the Federal Government in taxes plus a 25% extraction fee on the value of Alaskan oil produced, passed into law by her, which would be passed on by the oil companies to oil users in the lower forty eight. So why wouldn’t the Federal government require conditions to make sure the money was spent properly? )
Thus she passed from a political person of interest into a right wing political and media celebrity. (One can only wonder why the conservative public has this thirst for media personages like Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter and others and what it means for the future of politics when people with the slimmest of qualifications rise to be political media celebrities mouthing a no nothing simplistic mantra. It seems the more you dumb things down the more appealing they are. Like the invisible hand of self interest will always regulate the markets in an orderly manner.)
Sarah Plain In A Nut Shell: Going Rogue: Book Review: Campaign: Final Days: Accusations Of Treachery And Recriminations.
STEVE SCHMIDT:SARAH PALIN: WHO WAS THE VILLAIN?
Tempest In A Tea Pot
After the “Joe The Plummer Tour” the wardrobe controversy broke on October 22 2008, the headline read, “RNC Shells Out 150k For Palins Fashion.” Palin says the headline was misleading. First: she never asked the “New York stylists” to purchase the wardrobe, many of the items were never worn and many of the items were intended for other people than herself. She and her family never went on shopping trips to buy the items in question and in the end the items were returned. She contends that she was characterized as a “Diva” and her family was made to feel like a bunch of hillbillies who didn’t know how to dress. (The allusion to the New York stylist is probably to Nicolle Wallace and her staff who once worked for Katie Couric, Palin’s perceived nemesis along with the Wallaces and Steve Schmidt in this book.)
(The sources are not mentioned but one wonders how the press got the information about the wardrobe. Maybe the pirate ship had leaks. It certainly detracted from her image as the middleclass hockey mom struggling to bring up a family.)
End Days: Accusations Of Treachery and Recriminations.
When she did one of the interviews with Couric she wore a pink Dolce and Gabbana jacket she bought at a consignment store in Alaska. She told a crowd in Florida that “those clothes were never mine just like the lighting and staging they were bought by the RNC. I’m… now… wearing the clothes I bought from my favorite consignment shop in anchorage. She had told the truth but the campaign leaders admonished her again for going off script again.
By then she says the campaign was in free fall , their numbers were declining and the gears of the campaign machinery were not meshing. There was internal dissention and one side was blaming the other for events gone wrong. She and her staff wanted to” take the gloves off” and tell the people some facts about the Obama side they need to now. However the campaign leaders decided otherwise nor would it hold the press accountable for biased reporting.
However there were internal leaks to the press that she was a diva, a terrible pick and she constantly went off script. Randy Scheunemann confronted Steve Schmidt about the souces of these criticisms and asked if they were Nicolle and Mark Wallace. Schmidt say no.
It appeared to her that the leaders of the campaign saw they were going to lose and were criticizing the B Team (her campaign team). Schmidt told Randy they were “screwing” up, the Governor wasn’t doing serious “homework” and she might be suffering from” post partum depression.” Randy told Schmidt that was not the case.
It seem to her in the final days of the campaign when everyone should have been working hard they were gathering a stock of half truths and innuendoes to destroy her reputation . Politico the internet site had already ran a story implying this saying Schmidt planned to destroy her reputation in order to save his own.
CNN’s Dana Bush wrote an article saying that the campaign was accusing Palin of going rogue and trying to bust free of what she perceived as a damaging and mismanaged campaign. McCain sources said they wondered if her acts were deliberate when she labeled robo ( telephone) calls to prospective voters irritating and telling reporters that she disagreed with the campaigns decision to pull out of Michigan.
Palin felt that she was being thrown under the media bus by the campaign leaders leaking false accusations to the press to protect themselves against blame for losing the campaign which they perceived as already lost. It dumbfounded her that that campaign was preoccupied with these leaks and petty bickering instead of finishing strong.
Later when the Randy -Schmidt confrontation was made known Schmidt contradicted Randy’s version.
(It’s kind of obvious at this point that Palin believes Mark and Nicolle Wallace were the source of the leaks with Schmidt’s approval and perhaps Schmidt was a direct source of some of the leaked criticism.)
She wanted to give three major policy speeches on Energy, Special Needs Children and Woman’s issues and she wanted to write and edit them herself intertwining her own experiences, as a woman, governor of an oil producing state, and a mother. The campaign scheduled the first speech on Special Needs Children in a forty seat hotel ball room. The B team got it rescheduled to Pittsburgh with a large turnout. She wasn’t allowed to write her own speech but she did rework a special needs expert’s speech adding her own experiences. Later she gave speeches on Energy and Woman issues despite the main campaigns lack of help and promotion. She was surprised the main campaign failed to focus on these areas of her expertise earlier because when she gave the speeches they were received with enthusiasm by large crowds.
The next faux pas on her and her staff’s part was in accepting a prank call from two Montreal disc jockeys pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy. She believed the call to be real and answered many questions naïvely and made many unsophisticated comments. Steve Schmidt and the campaign leaders went berserk. She blames the mishap on unnamed staff members who set the call up and put it through. She also notes many other prominent people had been tricked by these pranksters in the past including Sarkozy himself.
On November 3, she made as many campaign stops as possible in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada before flying home to Alaska to cast her vote on election day, November 4, and then flying to Phoenix for either to celebrate a win or make a concession speech . She would follow God’s plan for her no matter that the GOP polls were predicting a defeat.
Sarah Palin In A Nut Shell: Going Rogue: Book Review: Campaigning After The Debate. Grasping At Straws On The Down Hill Slide.
The staff decorated the Jet Blue campaign jet with stickers and posters given to them by well wishers on the rope lines. The Jet Blue pilots even had a pair of moose antlers in the cockpit. They had a map displayed for visitors to the plane to sign. Thus the campaign was on the road after the Biden Debate.
(While these “celebrities” are known, some nationally some regionally, they are certainly not from the A list and maybe not even from the B list so of what value to her campaign, if any, they were is debatable.)
Another was Tito Munoz who wore a yellow hard hat, a reflective vest with construction worker written on the back and who owned a small construction company. (Sounds like he was sent out from central casting. His obvious ploy never caught on with the media like Joe the Plumber did. I guess the reporters are not as dumb as she says they are.)
Sarah Palin In A Nutshell: Going Rogue: Book Review: The First Debate With Joe Biden.Mark and Nicolle Wallace Are Blamed For Sabotaging Her Campaign.
Nicolle Wallace and Sarah Palin. Peas In A Pod? Never.
She prepared intensively for her first debate with Senator Joe Biden to be held in St. Louis. After a campaign stop in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, they holed up in a hotel in that city for preparation for her debate with Biden. She notes she “loves” the people of Philadelphia however there were many hateful demonstrators on the route to the hotel. Some were wearing t-shirts with foul epithets about her that were seen by her children.
Mark Wallace led the preparation team in Philadelphia and she says he was mysteriously guided by “Campaign Headquarters” out of Washington. Who comprised headquarters was unknown to her.
She really doesn’t like the Wallace’s, Mark and Nicolle. She says she was sequestered in a hotel, the curtains drawn tight, with a debate prep team led by Wallace. She was in a hostile city with protesters on the streets and she was blocked from fresh air, sunshine, running, her preferred exercise and a prep team she had no confidence in. It appears that the initial prep team had little confidence in her.
She criticizes the prep team for giving her flash cards with questions on one side and suggested answers on the other side. The answers did not seem to relate to the questions. She asked about this but was told you don’t have to answer the question with an exact or even a responsive answer. (The inference here is that the team led by Mark Wallace thought she was incapable of debating the experienced Biden, particularly on foreign policy, his area of expertise in the Senate.)
Then the news came that PBS’s Gwen Ifill had been chosen to be moderator. She was a former N.Y Times reporter and perceived to be an Obama supporter. Steve Schmidt was convinced Ifill would not be impartial. (It turned out that she was impartial.)
Finally Joe Lieberman came and offered his counsel which she agreed with. He told her “Don’t let these people try to change you. Don’t let them tell you what to say or think.”
The situation in Philadelphia deteriorated to the point that the debate team wanted to fly in a nutritionist to improve her diet and thus improve her mentation because they felt she was on the Atkin’s Diet. This idea arose because she ate Atkin’s bars for snacks. However she said the problem was she couldn’t do her daily run and the ineptitude of the prep team. (Possibly they were trying to dumb things down for her and she was insulted by this tactic.)
Finally Cindy McCain invited the debate prep team to her ranch in Arizona. The fresh air, her ability to run with no hostile protesters as in Philadelphia along with a new “ace” debate prep leader, Randy Scheunemann, turned the situation around.
She points out that Biden had voted against The Trans- Alaska Pipeline which turned out, in her estimation, as an overwhelming success. (This is true if you exclude the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound as a part of the pipeline.) The points she wanted to make were that the McCain-Palin ticket was for free market principles to get the economy going again and not government bailouts or government growth and more regulation. She also wanted to focus on military strength and support for our Allies, particularly Israel.
She had two full scale debate preps with a moderator and Randy taking the Biden part. Her preparation went well in the fresh air and warm sun of Arizona. Randy Schneunemann is extolled as the man that got her ready for the debate. A crucial point in the campaign.
Randy counseled her to ask Joe Biden if she could call him Joe because she frequently misspoke his name by saying O’Biden during the prep meetings. This was supposed to take place off camera but it happened on camera by accident she wants us to believe.
The debate took place at Washington University in St. Louis. Gwen Ifill conducted it from a wheel chair as she had broken her ankle the day before.
The debate went smoothly from the campaign’s point of view. (The polls gave a slight edge to Biden.) However it was not the disaster some had predicted and she had negotiated that hurdle and maintained her credibility as a vice presidential candidate.
The following morning she learned through a reporter that the campaign had pulled out of Michigan. She answered she ” wished we weren’t pulling out of Michigan and that every vote mattered and that she first learned about it in a newspaper article” not from the campaign staff. This gave the impression the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing campaign wise and also gave rise to the charge she was off script or “going rogue.” Nicolle began calling her tour bus the “pirate ship.” This is also an inference the Wallace’s didn’t keep her informed and then enhanced the going “off script” charge by calling the tour bus a pirate ship or rogue element . Thus creating another sore point between herself, her handlers and Steve Schmidt the captain of the ship.
Sarah Palin In A Nut Shell : Going Rogue: Book Review. LIFE WITH THE MEDIA AFTER THE CONVENTION INCLUDING KATIE COURIC. The GREAT DIVIDER.
Sarah Palin states she had a good relationship with the Media in Alaska before she became John McCain’s running mate. She frequently called into radio talk shows to make comments. In addition many reporters had her personal cell phone and they could get an immediate answer from her on any issue or fact they wished to report her views on.
Her relationship with the Alaska Media ended when she became a Vice Presidential candidate. Steve Schmidt and his staff guided by the campaign powers in Washington wanted to control all relations with the Media. Who the powers in Washington were is not mentioned. Thus she was prevented from making off the cuff remarks to the Alaska Media or the reporters travelling with her.
However she says she obtained the call in number of national talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and others. However The campaign staff prevented her from playing up to the right probably because they were trying to make the average voter perceive her as more centrist , the vote they would have to capture in order to win the election. She alleges the campaign leaders never responded to an on air request from Bill O’Reilly for an interview on Fox. (This is probably because the campaign wanted to be perceived as centrists and chose the mainstream national broadcast networks for the interviews.)
Nicolle,” her stylist” who previously worked for Katie Couric, pushed her to grant an interview with Katie. She was told by Nicolle,” Katie likes you. She sees you as another working mom with teenage daughters. Katie wants you to like her.” (This dosen’t ring true. An unnamed stylist is influencing her to grant Couric one of her first nationally televised interviews the other being with Charles Gibson of ABC.) “ You know what we will do schedule a segment with her. If it doesn’t go well, if there is no chemistry, we won’t do any others.” The Nicolle she is referring to is presumably Nicolle Wallace a former White House Communications Director for George W. Bush and media strategist selected with her husband to work with Palin. Wallace denies the conversation ever took place. Palin, apparently also blames her for the goof with her expensive wardrobe when she was trying to establish herself as a middleclass hockey mom so we get the designation and denigration of Nicolle as a “stylist.”
Wallace says the strategy was to have her appear on the nightly news of the national broadcast networks. Palin make it sound like when Couric asked her to name what she read it was “like how often do you cheat on your husband.” Also she says she was duped into thinking that the interview with Couric would be friendly and only on one occasion. It turned out to be three separate interviews and then they were was edited down for broadcast. She indicates much of her answers ended up on the cutting room floor and only the most damaging material to her image was left in. She makes it sound like Couric was out to get her to improve her dismal ratings at the time. (First of all the producers at CBS would have edited the interview. Couric may have some say but not the only say as to the shape of what was aired on CBS. CBS is noted for its journalistic excellence being the network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. So this sounds like sour grapes.) Palin also says her advisers didn’t prepare her for the interviews and things came out sounding wrong i.e. as Governor she conducted foreign affairs with Russia and the Pacific Rim countries as well as Canada that were twisted in the editing. ( Now you know why she calls this book Going Rogue. She just doesn’t get the fact that the McCain campaign strategy was to move to the center . Making loose statements and grandstanding to the right ( her modus operandi then and ever since) was not going to work in a national campaign.
Then her personal E-mail was hacked. It was more of a nuisance than damaging to her or the campaign. More of a nuisance since the networks broadcast the To and From addresses of her, her family and friends.
However when she appeared in Republican areas she drew
large crowds, even larger than McCain. (It was becoming evident she would be a superstar of the right and remains so to this day. With independents and Democrats she is an anathema.)
The McCain campaign wished to make the major issue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan however as events turned out the economy was in a downward spiral and that became the dominant issue.
She ruefully concludes that Katie Couric was bent on getting gotcha moments in her interviews and she succeeded . Thus she let her team down. However she is still bitter about the interviews which she believes established her image with the public. (This was enhanced later by the Tina Fey takeoffs of her as an airhead.) She notes that Joe Biden was given better treatment when Couric interviewed him and did not pick up on his statement “When the stock market crashed . Franklin D. Roosevelt got on television and didn’t just talk about the prices of greed. He said here’s what happened.”
Of course Roosevelt wasn’t president at the time and there was no television.
In the end she felt she was badgered and selectively edited by Couric and should have spent her time on the campaign trail with the “people.” ( She means her people or people more conservative than the average American voter which she would have reached in the broadcast interviews if she had been better prepared and more experienced in handling a serious as opposed to a softball interviews.)
In the end it appears she was not a unifier of the electorate but a divisive personage.
Sarah Palin In A Nutshell: Going Rogue: Book Review: At The Convention And Into the Crucible.
THE CONVENTION AND THEN INTO THE CRUCIBLE OF FATE.
Arriving in Minneapolis for the convention Sarah and her family were assigned a suite at the Hilton in downtown Minneapolis. The suit had two bedrooms, one for her, Todd and Trig the other was for her girls. Track had not arrived yet, but would stay down the hall with his cousins.
In the center of the room was a rack with clothes for her family. Someone had learned their sizes and style. She reasoned if someone was going to give me clothes might as well wear them. They were later fitted to her and the family. She had only bought an overnight bag on her whirlwind trip from Alaska.
She was assigned a stylist and hair and makeup persons. The stylist had worked with Katie Couric among others. ( Hm… Katie had the same clothing stylist wonder what that means.)
She listened to Barrack Obama’s speech on television hearing him for the first time and acknowledges that he was good but she “feared his smooth style would obscure what he was actually saying.” (A back hand compliment if ever there was one.)
She was assigned a Vice Presidential staff with media people, speechwriters, policy experts a VP campaign Chief of Staff named Andrew Smith. Smith was a former Wall Streeter with no campaign management experience as she was told by Steve Schmidt. (Obviously Schmidt was going to micro manage her campaign as well as the main campaign for obvious reasons.)
The Palin’s were made over and packaged for the campaign. She was uncomfortably with the policy wonks, managers, stylists, expensive clothes and the luxury surroundings but went along with the plan as she felt she was in the hands of experts.
As soon as the Media learned of McCain’s choice of her for his running mate it began to attack. She first recalls brushing her teeth while watching the news on in the bathroom mirror which had a built in TV screen and seeing the fact that Bristol was pregnant on the crawl across the bottom of the screen. She wasn’t hiding the fact but she thought her family would not be fair game in the campaign. Barack Obama had told the press “hands off the family “and his wishes had been respected for the most part. (On the other hand neither he nor his wife had been so vehemently pro life and for abstinence so when that agenda failed in Palin’s own family with 17 year old Bristol it was news.) However this was not to be with her family. Her staff urged her to put out a statement on the fact. Bristol was upset and embarrassed and wondered why the subject of her pregnancy was even in the news as she was not running for anything.
Despite the fact that she wrote a release acknowledging the fact of her daughter’s pregnancy but not endorsing teen age pregnancy the campaign released a statement she had previously rejected. It said “ Were proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and prouder to become grandparents.” We are not given the exact wording of her intended message. (Probably because she doesn’t have a copy of what was given to the staff for publication and later discarded or kept by them. So the seeds of her GOING ROGUE were being laid from the beginning.
Because she was revealed as McCain’s choice so late in the campaign there was no prepared press briefing kit for her. This usually is at least a three ring binder of her life and accomplishments up until that time from the McCain’s Campaign point of view. (However one would expect the Governor of a State to have her own press brief on the vital facts and controversy’s of her life. This could have been given to the campaign people to fashion into her VP press kit on short notice.) She says because of this reporters descended on Alaska and received highly jaundiced information form patchy factoids on the Internet and from sources that included a defeated former opponent, the falafel lady in Anchorage (Is this someone like a hockey mom whose only difference from a pit-bull is lipstick?) the Wasilla town crank and maniacal bloggers. (No offense taken.) (However Reporters and the Media would have done their own research on her background anyway deciding what was of on interest to their readers and an insight into her character and abilities.)
John Stein, the man she succeeded as mayor of Wasilla, said she injected her religious beliefs into her policies at times like trying to force the town librarian to delete books she found objectionable from the town library. Palin denies this as true. (The librarian who was fired by Palin says this was an accurate criticism.)
She was quoted as in favor abstinence only sex education and criticized that it didn’t even work in the case of her own daughter. She says this was another media error she was not against contraception only explicit sex education where demonstrations like slipping a condom over a banana or show and tell demonstrations were given. However if explicit sex education was to be taught she was for abstinence only education. (This parsing of the subject doesn’t ring true.) She cites these stories and others where the press twisted the facts to her detriment. (This was her evidence of a hostile press from the beginning. This criticism by her continues to this day. Probably because she is so far out of the mainstream that middle of the road reporters can’t find much to report that would make her less like a right wing celebrity without portfolio and more like a serious politician.)
Her speech at the convention was a team effort led by Matthew Scully who had written for Bush 43, Dick Cheney and John McCain before. Thus she says he was a political conservative, a vegetarian and a “gentle, green soul.” (Whatever that means.)
She practiced the speech before a teleprompter which she felt that was unnecessary because she knew how to speak and she had a teleprompter so why practice. (Obviously Steve Schmidt knew there is often many a slip between the cup and the lip and was taking no chances with this woman in an event to be viewed by millions.)
The speech went over well and she was inspired by the enthusiasm and her reception at the convention. She was the one to invoke John McCain’s heroic war record and to introduce one of his fellow prisoners who spoke of his valor and courage under the most trying of circumstances.
She was nominated the Vice Presidential running mate to John McCain a fateful moment in her life trajectory and maybe McCain’s. Because she certainly alienated the women who had supported Hillary Clinton so McCain lost that important segment of the electorate however she helped cement his relationship with the far right who were critical of some of his policy positions in the past.
Thus the seeds of her strengths and weaknesses were visible and under the crucible of a Presidential Campaign would be brought out.
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